


A Good Buddy

by Nottherealdean



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 21:27:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1703099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nottherealdean/pseuds/Nottherealdean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean goes back to Purgatory to find Benny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Buddy

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on tumblr on May 26, 2014.

Benny looked stunned. Dean couldn’t help it, he lost the cool, collected composure he’d planned on and grinned, goofily happy but nervous.  _Please—_ , he thought, and couldn’t finish it. 

"Hey!" he didn’t know what to say next, so he kept walking closer through the trees. 

"Dean?" Benny asked, and it didn’t sound like joy but it didn’t really sound like he hated him now either, so Dean went for it. He hugged him, tight, and after about half a second Benny’s arms came up and wrapped around him back. Dean half-laughed with relief. 

"What’re you—?" Benny asked, and maybe it was concern, that’s what it was in his voice. 

Dean was still smiling, so he grimaced a little to flash the fangs. “Thought I’d say hi,” he said, still giddy. “Took me a while to track you down, though. You sure haven’t been settling down anywhere, huh?” He smacked Benny’s arm, but Benny, his hand still resting on Dean’s shoulder, looked upset. 

"Someone got you?" he asked, like a hunter getting done in by a monster was like getting mugged on the way home from work instead of the standard retirement package. 

"Well—," Dean started, not eager to have this conversation but not ready to lie. "It’s— it’s a little more complicated than that. But I’m here now, so—"

"Complicated." Benny rolled the word out slow, letting it fill his mouth as he said it and looking unsure of the taste. "And what kind of complicated are we talking about, here, brother?"

“ _Complicated_  complicated.” It didn’t look like Benny was going to take that as an answer. “Why didn’t you come back with Sam, kind of complicated.”

"Dean." Benny’s hand gripped at his coat, not hard, but hanging on. "You  _let_  a vamp turn your ass?”

"Technically, no." For some reason it seemed like an important point. "I didn’t  _let_  him do anything, I killed the asshole and then there was all his blood right there, and then I rigged up this, this machete-guillotine thing—,” Dean realized he was babbling. “I took care of it.”

"You punched your one-way ticket yourself." 

"That’s about it," Dean said, not getting why this seemed to be the last straw for Benny. He’d asked him to go back to Purgatory— he’d  _cut off his head_ — to rescue the guy who’d been hell-bent on killing him. Why was he balking at  _this?_

"Look, it wasn’t working out up there, and I did bring stuff for the cure and I don’t know if it works here but I haven’t fed, so we could try it and then see what happens at the portal. And then you— you could come back and we could try it again."

Benny had his mouth open, and whatever he was about to say didn’t look like it was going to be rousing support of Dean’s plan.

"I know I left you hanging and I asked way too much of you, but this time I—" He sounded desperate in his own ears, but he didn’t know what else to say.

"You think you  _owe_  me this?” Now Benny sounded horrified. 

"… yeah. Yeah, I do, I should have been there for you—"

"No, you shouldn’t have," Benny was looking at him like he’d done something horrible, like he’d cut off someone  _else’s_  head to get there (well there was the vampire, but he’d been feeding off of drunk teenagers so Benny probably would have killed him too). 

"You should’ve been keepin’ your own head above water. If you’re drownin’, man, you get yourself to shore. You don’t grab onto someone else who’s goin’ under so you can go down together. That’s takin’ the friend thing too far, brother."

"I bailed on you—"

"Nah. I gotta tell you, Dean, I thought it was too much what you were willin’ to do for that angel, and now looking at it from the inside," Benny shook his head, "It is just as fucked to hell as it looked from the outside. We gotta stop and take stock, man."

"You let me kill you!"

"Only ‘cause I was ready to go. If I’ve thought I had a chance at making it work topside, baby bro would be coolin’ his heels down here while I made you soup or somethin’ and bought you kleenex." 

The ground underneath Dean started to crumble— no, it had been crumbling for a long time now and that’s why he’d come to Purgatory, hoping to find a piece of solid ground to stand on while everything else sank away. 

Maybe Benny saw that, the earth sliding out from under Dean’s feet, because he said, “Some things ain’t exactly chit-chat material so I never asked, but my old man played God and I learned his commandments, and sometimes, brother, it sure sounds like you’ve got a set of your own someone handed down from on high.”

"I’ve got to—" Dean protested, and was glad when Benny cut him off, because he didn’t know what he was going to say.

"And if that’s how it is, maybe you oughta kill that God," Benny said. "Before he kills you. Again." Benny slid his hand over on Dean’s shoulder so it was resting against his neck as he said that— a little too low, the blade had fallen a bit higher, but he wouldn’t know that. 

"He’s already dead," Dean said, his ears ringing. "He took a demon deal and healed me."

"Mmmm," said Benny, looking just as skeptical as when Dean had been insisting Cas had gotten grabbed by monsters instead of ditching him. It felt like eons ago. You could count it in months, though, if you wanted, and wasn’t that more horrifying than all the monsters in Purgatory. 

"And how did you get hurt so bad," Benny asked, "It took a demon to heal you?" 


End file.
